Sound sound sound sound sound...

Sound is such an important part of any moving image, whether it is animation, film or in this case gaming. For my game I wanted to have a mix of sounds to keep the game interesting but limit the amount of effects else it can easily become sloppy and messy.

Radio Station

I was hoping to have a specific ‘radio station’ in the background like they do in some shops and restaurants where the music links directly to the atmosphere they are hoping to create, matching what they are selling (an example of this is TKMaxx radio, or the music they play in Yo!Sushi).  

As it is a Japanese based game, I was hoping to find some authentic Japanese music, aiming towards the J-pop genre rather than J-rock music (as I feel J-pop is more fun and lively matching my game more), or traditional Japanese music (which again I am steering towards a modern Japan for my game).

To begin with I searched all the free music sites, for creative commons free music, but none matched what I was looking for, and had a far more serious tone than hoped.

As a lover of J-pop I have my own personal favorites, so decided as this game will not be sold and is only for educational purposes that I would use music I already relate to my game and if I were to sell this game then I would try and get permission to use this music or search for other songs, or even commission someone to make the game it's own music. Here is a link to a playlist I made on youtube of my favourite Japanese music.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsNE91McgEw&feature=share&list=PLW0d1kUJ53eMO9brATmuFp6wJtWtgouKj
Japanese playlist

From this I took this I chose which songs I wanted to use and put them in a folder on the computer together.

To create a more authentic radio station I wanted a piece of speech between two of the songs, so I used Google Translate to type in the English sentence I wished to be translated, and recorded the sound of the Japanese translation and pronunciation.

I then took all the songs I had saved and spent an hour choosing which songs to choose and the track order which flows smoothly, which I then added the pre-recorded Japanese radio speech in-between the first two songs. I then imported everything into Audacity to start editing it all together.

Once I had the order I listened through to the whole playlist and made a few slight changes, which were mainly adjusting the sound levels of a few of the overly quiet or overly loud songs, and trimming off some of the long pauses between songs or adding more.

Once everything was in place and how I wanted it to sound I exported the file out as both a WAV file and an MP3.

Sound Effects

Which then leads onto the other sounds needed in the game. As well as a constant background radio noise, I wanted more interactive noises which were triggered in certain areas of the game. The sounds I decided to search for was a mechanical sound for the Sushi bar going around, bubbles popping from the bubble blower and water splashing from the fountain.

I found that this website had the most relevant sounds for me, and I managed to find two free sound effects here, but had no luck trying to find a sushi track noise which was the least important effect I wanted. Thinking about it after spending a few hours for the 'perfect' sound effect for it, I was worried that it would be too loud and distracting so it is probably better off without it.